"When they all make you feel like a problem girl, remember, you're no problem at all." Rob Thomas, Problem Girl

Saturday, September 8, 2012

You say you wish you had a scooter. You say it looks like fun. And
yes, it can be fun, zooming around campus at a grand 4.5 miles per hour,
the wind in my hair, unencumbered by my legs. But after awhile, it
stops being fun.

It stops being fun when a kid who’s texting and walking literally
falls in your lap, nearly tipping your scooter, and doesn’t even have
the decency to apologize before he walks away.

It stops being fun when it takes five to ten maneuvers just to get
out of your dorm room. And if you don’t do it just right, if you’re
even the slightest bit off, you have to start maneuvering all over
again, and all the while you’re panicking, knowing your time to get to
class is dwindling away.

It stops being fun when the wheelchair accessible desk is tucked in a
corner, and every day you have to move it, and everyone looks away
uncomfortably, pretending they don’t see you so they won’t have to offer
to help you.

It stops being fun when you have to miss class because it snowed
overnight, and the paths aren’t clear enough for your scooter to get
through.

It stops being fun when you feel like there’s a constant, bright
spotlight on your head that will never, ever go away. When you’ve been
reduced to a nickname of “Wheels”, and not once, over nearly three
years, has anyone ever bothered to ask you what your real name is. When
professors know who you are before your wheels cross the threshold of
the classroom, not because of any great feat you’ve done, but because
you stick out like a sore thumb on campus. And you wish that just one
time, you could blend in, be anonymous, just another one of the hundreds
of students that attend classes every day. But you will never, ever
get that right to anonymity, no matter how hard you beg, no matter how
much you cry.

When you use a wheelchair, you lose your right to be an individual
person. Your entire personality, the entire sum of experiences that
makes you YOU, gets distilled down to one aspect of yourself - an
important aspect, but only one aspect nonetheless. People don’t look at
your face anymore, only your wheels. That’s why we all get mixed up
with each other - because no one bothers to look at our faces. Having a
(fairly visible) disability isn’t just something you can turn and off
at will - that’s why the simulations are screwed up, because you can
just hop out of the wheelchair when you’re done and go “Well, that was
fun! Back to reality now!” This IS my reality, and it’s never, ever
going away.

So go on. Keep thinking it’s fun. I won’t argue with you - that
would be a waste of my already limited energy. But maybe someday,
you’ll end up like me. Due to an accident or disease or just plain old
age, you’ll use a chair. And when it’s no longer a game, you’ll see how
“fun” it is. I hope you’ll look back and think about what you said to
me. Hopefully, you’ll apologize for your ignorance. And maybe,
wherever I am, I’ll hear you.